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have enjoyed so much. That I have trials, I do not wish to conceal. But great, also, are my consolations; and nothing but the conviction that I could not be useful here, would ever lead me to have the least desire to return. Yes, my friends, I am cheerful, contented, and happy. Nothing but the evils of my own heart ever greatly disturbs my peace.

I find Mr. and Mrs. Gulick every thing I can ask, either as Christians, missionaries, or friends. They are kindly attentive to all my wants;* and for this world, I have nothing to ask. All I want is a more thankful heart. As to our associates, we find them pleasant and agreeable, and, so far, we have gone on happily. My health is excellent. The warm climate does not affect me un

As the principal motive in giving this letter to the publick, is the hope of serv ing, by its publication, the cause of missions, it will reflect as much lustre on that cause, as honour to the spirit that animates the missionary of the cross, to let it be known that Miss Ogden inherited from her father, Judge Ogden, an ample competence, a large part of which, I think an entire moiety, she gave, with herself, to the disposal of the American Board, for missionary purposes.-J.

pleasantly as yet. Indeed, I do not suffer at all with the heat. In the morning and evening, we have the sea breeze; the nights are always cool, and it is only for two or three hours, in the middle of the day, that we are at all uncomfortable in the house. But, in going out, the sun is very hot.

A vessel is now anchored here, which will sail for America in a few days. I have several other letters to write. It is a late hour, and my paper and eyes warn me that it is time to conclude. Give my affectionate remembrance to all my dear friends, particularly Mrs. Dare and Mrs. Osborn. I shall soon begin to look anxiously for letters from my friends afar off. When will some prosperous wind waft me intelligence from my beloved country? I hope you will write as often as your engagements will admit. Your communications will be as cold water to a thirsty soul. Deny me not this request. Give my love to all the dear children. Accept my sincere desires for your temporal and eter. nal happiness; and believe me truly and affectionately Yours,

M. OGDEN.

Keview.

We have earnestly desired, almost from the commencement of our editorial labours, to lay before our readers a condensed and perspicuous view of the state of theology and literature in Germanyof the origin and progress of that system of infidelity, which for many years was triumphant in the north of Europe, and which, it is hoped and believed, has at length passed the ascendant, and is now on the decline. We have not hitherto been able fully to accomplish our wishes, although we have inserted a number of articles which contain a por

tion of the information that we have been anxious to communicate. The following article, translated by a friend from the Archives of Christianity, gives, in reviewing two distinguished German publications, a better concise view of the rise and advance of the impious system to which we have reference, and which is denominated Neologism or Neology, than we have elsewhere seen. This review, when completed, and the short article in another part of our work, will give our readers a tolerable idea of that new German theology, which is said

men.

FROM THE ARCHIVES DU CHRISTIANISME.

to be now losing ground under the contemporary periodicals, its sucpowerful influence of evangelical cess will offer a higher title to cutruth and reformation principles-riosity and interest. The EcclesiasMay it speedily be sent back to tico-Evangelical Gazette, published "its own place," and never be perat Berlin, is, in many respects, a momitted again to escape thence, to ral phenomenon, in a high degree pervert and destroy the souls of worthy of attentive consideration. To view it in all its importance, we must be well acquainted with the scene in which it makes its appearance; but it is difficult to give a just idea of it to those who have only a superficial knowledge of the theological literature of the Germans. Meanwhile, the principal end of the Archives of Christianity, does not permit us to pass in silence a publication so remarkable. To account for the exception which we believe it due to make to the rules which we have prescribed for ourselves, and which prohibit all discussion of a nature rather literary than religious, we think it proper to describe some of the features which are particularly prominent in the state of German theology, such as it has presented for observation during half a century.

1. EVANGELISCHE KIRCHENZEITUNG, &c. The Evangelical, Ecclesiastical Gazette, edited by a Society of German Divines, under the direction of Dr. Heugstenberg, Professor in the University of Berlin; a semi-weekly paper of 4 pages quarto, commencing 1st July, 1827.

2. TÜBINGER ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR THE

OLOGIE, &C. A Periodical devoted to Theology, by the Professors of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Tubingen, and published by Dr. J. C. F. Steudel; 1828. No. 1. 291, pp.

8vo.

In order duly to appreciate the value of a literary production, it may be considered in two different points of view. Regarded in itself, it is the intrinsic value of it, and the service which it renders to the branch of knowledge to which it appertains, that must be taken into account; and the critick who analyzes it, will endeavour to exhibit what the work which he announces adds, in principle or in method, to the riches already acquired 'to the science of which it treats. Under another aspect, a new publication, even when it presents no claim to this sort of merit, has a just right to the attention of men who love to watch the movements of opinion, when a generally felt need of such a publication has called it forth, and when it manifests the tendency of received principles. It is evidently under this latter position, that a new journal demands our consideration; and if its professed principles differ from those which prevail in universally accredited

About the year sixty of the last century, two influences combined to work a revolution in the manner of studying and teaching Christianity. The one, purely exterior, issued from the court of a great king,* who forsook his labours, and sought a respite in the society of some men of foreign letters-the slaves of the pleasures of a corrupt refinement, and skilful to conceal from themselves, and from their admirers, their moral misery and abasement, under the illusions of an elegant and frivolous scepticism. However, the game which the wits of infidelity played at Potsdam, could not have been able to disturb the faith of an educated and serious people, and the ascendancy of French opinions and manners would have left fewer traces in Germany than in England, where they had been diffused among the higher classes by the courtiers of

* The King of Prussia, Frederick the Great.-EDIT.

the Stuarts, and more lately by Bolingbroke, if the theological innovators, to whom the literature of France gave an impulse of which they were in a great measure unconscious, had not found under their hands, arms, with which the more distinguished schools of divinity and philology in their country had furnished them. The German literati, very far from nourishing sentiments hostile to the Christian religion, as did those writers for whom they entertained still more dread than sympathy, and intending to defend rather than do it injury, imposed upon themselves by the illusion that in removing from it all that shocked, if not reason, at least the professed interpreters of reason, they would restore to Christianity its lustre, reduce all scoffers to silence, and save the lightened vessel from shipwreck. The greater portion of them, belonging by their talents to the first rank of the classical authors of their nation, esteemed for the services which they had rendered to its literature, and respected on account of their situation in the church, and for their private virtues, saw themselves, from the commencement of their projects for reform, singularly aided by the German Bibliotheque Universelle, a journal, which, by a real superiority of style and taste, not less than by the celebrity of its editors, seized upon the good opinion of the studious classes; and for more than thirty years, exercised a species of dictatorship in the whole round of moral science and literature. The empire of this journal over men of the world and scholars, was perpetuated and extended by a great number of other periodical sheets, which adopted the same principles, and continued the work of reducing or purifying the dogmatical part of Christianity, amidst the plaudits of learned bodies, and of almost all the directors of in

struction.

They only, who have lived in the universities of Germany, and followed the march of mind and theological learning during the last two generations, can form any idea of the overwhelming influence which carried them to the adoption of every conjecture, of every hypothesis, opposed not only to ancient orthodoxy, but to all revelation, and to all religion founded upon a historical basis. To acquire reputation, and obtain preferment, it became necessary that they should distinguish themselves by some ingenious combination, some bold assertion, which shook the credit of some one of the data, or the authenticity of some one of the writings, upon which the defenders of the ancient faith depend. ed. For these labours only two things were requisite, that they should be learned, and that their results should cast uncertainty upon facts, or points of doctrine, which had been before admitted.

the

Circumstances inherent in the German universities, contributed singularly to favour and accelerate this revolutionary movement, in the field of old established belief. The young professors had small salaries. In order to procure a subsistence with tolerable ease, and to open way to places of greater emolument, it was necessary that their teaching should attract by its bril liancy, a crowd of students and the attention of the publick. It was their business to allure both the one and the other; but long; winded researches, labours ripened by time and reflection, such as those to which the Coryphei of eru dition, the master criticks of the seventeenth century, and in general the learned and more liberally recompensed English and Dutch, had consecrated the whole of a la borious life,-would have been entirely too tedious to conduct to their end young men, who were in haste to ameliorate their humble and precarious condition. It was necessary for them to arrive prompt

ly at renown, and through that, to the good graces of the youth at the university. There was no method so sure and expeditious, for obtaining this, as to hasten to a place in the ranks of the innovators, and to mark their entry upon the career of academick instruction by a hazardous opinion, an unusual hypothesis, which opened a seducing prospect of doctrinal alterations. Undoubtedly, rashness was not sufficient; proofs of mind and knowledge were requisite. But to a young man, gifted with talent, and seeking to cast a degree of splendour upon the commencement of his labours, some attractive idea would readily present itself, some view which would strike the attention of the numerous friends of theological discussions, and which the vigorous and comprehensive studies pursued in the German colleges, to which he had been devoted, would richly furnish him with the means of defending, adorn ing, and rendering plausible and specious. What was the natural consequence of this? He affirmed that such a book, or such a part of a book, hitherto reputed authentick, was of a posterior age; that the interpretation of an important passage, universally adopted, was groundless; that such a doctrine, deemed fundamental, was of slight importance, or even erroneous: behold him, through selflove, or through the habit of looking no longer upon the object in question, except under one aspect, -behold him engaged to maintain henceforth, against every attack, and against his own doubts, an assertion which a new and more profound investigation would have forced him to relinquish, if that relinquishment had not become the price of a reputation which he was in haste to enjoy.

To this situation of young theological professors in the university, distinguished by their talents and their knowledge, we must add their

preparatory studies, in order to facilitate the explanation of one of the most remarkable moral phenomena, which the history of the human mind presents,-that of seeing a nation, characteristically solid and serious, as profoundly religious as it is considerate and circumspect, for so long a time carried away in all the tendencies of its thoughts and literature, towards an order of ideas subversive of all belief in a religion built upon historical facts. In Ğermany, to be qualified to fill the functionsof the sacred ministry,and especially the chair of an academick professor, those destined to these offices are at first instructed with the utmost care, in all the branches of philology and philosophy which are in contact with the spirit and the language of antiquity, and with the principles of metaphysics and psychology, joined to those of rational or positive religion. This is a course founded on the nature of things; there can be no doubt that the best theologian is he, who, depending on divine assistance, brings the learning of the philologian, and the meditations of the profound philosopher, to the study of the holy Scriptures. But these preparatory studies should not wholly engross him, should not prevail over a supreme regard to those interests which are specially confided to him-those of man, utterly feeble and perverted. The sciences, if permitted to gain the mastery over the heart, endeavour to comprehend every thing; what they cannot explain is to them indifferent, or suspected; they aspire to an enlargement of their dominion, which is that of curiosity and intellectual gratification, and this at the expense of the wants of our nature, wholly different, and more sacred: and as, in enlarging their sphere, they extend the horizon of the human mind, they flatter the appetite for independence, and lead it to favour, to authorize, and to cherish their usurpations over that faith which has a far other foundation than mere

understanding and speculative rea

son.

If, already, by their nature, and by the tendency which they impress upon their disciples, philology and philosophy are in a state of blind hostility to religious faith, how much more injurious still will their influence become, to the belief which reposes on sentiments of another origin and which wounds the pride of theoretical reason, when these branches of knowledge are taught to youth by instructors, who, if not infidel, are at least disposed to extend the jurisdiction of science to the detriment of Christian faith, and are exceedingly indifferent about what may weaken and undermine it? One must have necessarily remained an utter stranger to what the glory of lettered Germany has accomplished in modern times, to be ignorant of the immense empire that the philological and philosophical schools, which have rendered that country illustrious within half a century, have exercised over the tendency of principles and doctrines. Those of Heyne, and F. A. Wolf, changed the face of historical criticism, and displaced the points of view, under which men were accustomed to see the origin and the phases of civilization, institutions, worship, &c. and to form a judgment respecting the principal epochs of antiquity. The school of Kant still more deeply turned up the ground cultivated by his predecessors. One may say, that he operated a complete overturn in the philosophical aspect of human affairs, and accustomed almost the whole body of his countrymen to consider the faculties of man as the model, the measure, the arbitrators of all things, and reason as the competent judge, respecting the moral and religious interests of our species, from which there is no appeal. From these schools issued that immense majority of the learned, which, for more than forty years, composed the faculties of letters and theology in

Germany, and which furnished both the ministers of religion, and the professors who filled the chairs in the universities of the centre and the north of that classick land of erudition and philosophy.

Another circumstance adds new weight to our exhibition of the order of studies which was prescribed to the future ministers of the gospel. The greater part of them, uncertain as to their des tination, obliged to seek situations as instructors in noble families, or in secondary schools, waiting until they should be called to the ecclesiastical office, considered the holy ministry only as a remote and subsidiary occupation, an easy application of knowledge acquired in the gymnasia and at the univer sities, and directed their attention seriously to it, only from the moment when they entered upon the possession of a benefice, and the actual discharge of pastoral duties. Frequently, the attractions of the studies of history and philosophy, and the habit of devoting to them the chief part of their time, accompa nied them into their new situation, and the pastors, pre-occupied with their academick recollections, readily joined in the combats which were carried on in the fields of philology and metaphysicks, and gave preference to the journals in which the truths of the gospel were kept in subordination to the results of historical criticism and the phi losophy of the day.

And what are the principles which reign throughout the whole province of these investigations? To render every thing subordinate to the hu man understanding, to admit nothing which it cannot comprehend and trace to its cause, to consider as doubtful, or suspected, whatever is not reducible to clear notions, and to facts, not only attested by unobjectionable testimony, but also con formed to the laws of the psychology and metaphysicks in vogue,-these form the supreme rule, the applica

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